Bananaweisen (banana and hefeweisen). It was weirdly delicious. Work took a group of us to Bonn to work on the exhibition and I ended up learning that I really like Germany. Who knew?
Lots of interests that I have now were sparked by that trip, and I ended up returning to Germany several more times for work and for pleasure.
On this trip in particular, I had decided to do some research on my German ancestors beforehand. Lack of language skills and lack of resources in those days hampered the search. But Google Book helped me crack the question of who these ancestors were.
My family had two German immigrant ancestors. One had a last name that is incredibly common. The other had an incredibly uncommon last name. I searched in Google Book and located an obituary of a guy with our unusual last name who theoretically could be the father of our first immigrant ancestor. I printed out the obituary and our German paper conservator translated it for me. Turns out that this guy (who I had not yet connected to my family) was super interesting and had married the daughter of a portrait painter from Dresden. Once I had that hook I was able to figure things out enough to ask questions of a German genealogy researcher who helped me peel away the layers of the onion.
I'm still researching these people, and learning more about Saxony in the mid-18th century. We've seen my ancestor's paintings in person, and just last week I figured out that he painted the portrait of Louis Charles de France (son of Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette) at the Tuileries in 1790. It stretches the imagination that someone would have traveled 650 miles from Dresden to Paris by horse or carriage *for work* in those days.
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